I’m working on degoogling and moving away from major tech companies. I’m really curious what others here are using instead — especially for everyday tools and services.
What do you use for things like:
1.Email
2.Cloud storage / file sync
3.Maps & navigation
4.Search engine
5.Web browser
6.Calendar
7.Contacts management
8.Notes / to-do lists
9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)
10.Messaging / chat
11.Video calling
12.Social media / microblogging RSS reader / news
13.Music streaming / podcast app
14.Video streaming / YouTube alternative
15.Password manager
16.VPN / DNS / Firewall
17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)
18.App store / APKs
19.Photo backup / gallery
20.Weather
21.Smart assistant (if any)
22.Anything else you’ve replaced?
Would love to hear about your setup — both what works well and any trade-offs you’ve had to make. Always looking for better FOSS or privacy-friendly alternatives
1·1 day ago- email: i dont have the time and/or possibility to change from google. some forums only allow registering from well known domained emails, and ive heard horrible things about the free tier proton and tuta users (also im currently on the proton translation team and they send me these horrible mid management fucktard emails every week like im a corporate slave. sorry for doin free work fuckhats)…also their app is crap. i use fairmail on droid, and postbox on win. i do have a secondary disroot email account.
- cloud: i was fast enough to secure myself a lifetime 200gb filen.io package. weird ui, but works.
- maps: as a cyclist, organic maps is the best thing ever. wouldnt recommend it for cars tho, cause big tech is required for live traffic stats.
- search: still google. most search engines only tag NA and west EU sites, so youve got qwant or ddg which are slow as hell. mullvad has no picture search which i often use (and no wide mode for some reason?).
- ironfox and librewolf. extensions: ublock, consentomatic, clearurls. chromium browsers tend to run in the background, so they can suck my salami.
- calendar etar, but barely use it
- quillpad for notes but i dont use it much
- office: ms on the work lappy, nothing on my private rig. nothing beats readera on android.
- msg: molly as a degoogled signal, a modded discord with revenge for less tracking and more customisability, and nekogram
- i dont videocall
- social: nothing really. mastodon, reddit, lemmy, some imgur…but i wouldnt consider these a social media, more like getting rid of the bordom on the toilet.
- music: for streaming a modded spotify and murglar, for local gramophone. gramophone rocks.
- i dont stream video, they all suck
- password: good old bitwarden. works on any device, syncs for free, but 1 dollar per month isnt a big deal either. aegis or stratum for 2fa, cause i aint gonna sync those.
- firewall: blokada, and pihole at home
- launcher: squarehome. the metro design is perfect on a mobile, a pain on pc. paid for it, cause its super awsome. dev deserves the money.
- appstore: currently play store and droidify, bank and government apps require google
- i just simply manually backup my photos like a caveman
- weather: wöw. literally everything else sucks. not even funny at this point.
- i also chose algernon’s wife as my smart assistant
- extra: bcr for call recording, birday for birthday notifications, catima for clubcards, fitotrack for running, iconify for system customisation, heliboard for keyboard, parcel for tracking packages, z- lib for downloading books, nitterify to read twitter links which happens rather rare nowdays.